2. The efficacy of prayer in the Church. God is moved by the prayers of His people. Witness Moses, Elijah, &c. (Jas. v. 16). Why then so many prayers unanswered? For the cause we must look into the Church rather than up to God. II. THE REAL CAUSE. As of oldour sins. Look at this matter of sin in the Church. Though the Church in this age may be innocent of those more flagrant transgressions (ch. lviii.), yet are we not guilty before heaven, for stopping in some measure the spread and growth of the Church. Let us particularise a few of the Church's sins. Think of-1. Her worldly spirit. 2. Her formalism. 3. Her apathy in reference to the masses. It but remains, now that we see the cause of the Church's small success, that we humble ourselves before God, &c.-F. Crozier: The Methodist Recorder, July 14, 1871. GOD'S POWER UNDIMINISHED. By the Lord's hand His power is intended. By the hand of His power He is in contact with the object on which He designs to operate. The question proposed is this: Is His power diminished? Its present extent is considered in relation to some previously recognised extent of it. It was previously recognised as without limit. Is it now less ? The text is really an affirmation in the form of an interrogation. The Lord's hand is not. shortened: His power is not diminished. This is the answer to the question in Numbers xi. 23 and Isaiah 1. 2. Let us consider the truth and some applications of it. I. THE TRUTH ITSELF (see p. 365). It is that the Lord's power was and is unlimited, and therefore equal to anything it becomes Him to do or which He has undertaken to do. In creation, providence, and redemption, the Divine power has been displayed, &c. Omnipotence, then, is an attribute of the Divine nature. We probably regard this as a settled point. But the river of our faith does not exhibit an unin terrupted flow. It encounters obstacles at many points. It sometimes suffers loss. When a new difficulty occurs we debate the whole question. Notwithstanding our clear perception of the greatness of God's power, the temptation is to measure it by our own. We catch the infection of the world's atmosphere. We are told that if science declares a thing impossible, and revelation declares it possible, science must win the victory. We lack the courage to reply that science is only the human knowledge of the day, which is continually undergoing change. The wonders of the past were pronounced impossible by the science of the past. And as the divine science of the past has shown itself in advance of the human, it will show its superiority in the future. God is unchangeable. Human power, after being used a given. time, becomes feeble, and eventually incapable of exertion. There is no cause of decay or diminution in God. He can neither increase nor diminish; because He is infinite and immutable. Let us mention II. SOME OF ITS APPLICATIONS (see pp. 365, 366): : 1. It should be applied to our temporal anxieties. Moses and the children of Israel (Num. xi.). The disciples and the five thousand people. How frequently in the experience of believers. has there been some pressing difficulty, from which extrication seemed impossible, and their customary faith staggered under its weight, when an unexpected way was made by some new turn of affairs, and the difficulty disappeared. It may have happened to some of you. God seemed to ask an answer to the question: "Is my hand shortened?" 2. It should be applied to spiritual diffi culties. Many things clearly revealed in the Gospel as things that may happen. We do not see how they can. Falling into the snare of the devil we measure the Divine power by our own. "How can these things be?" &c. Do some of you say the difficulty in the way of your salvation is insuperable because of your extreme sinfulness and hardness? You are measuring the Lord by yourself. You are putting a limit to the power of His Spirit and the efficacy of the Saviour's blood. 3. It should be applied to the world's conversion. You look abroad on the world with something like the prophet's hopeless scepticism. Can these bones live? It is beyond you. But it is not beyond Him. 4. It should be applied to our intellectual doubts. There are many questions in respect to which we are driven upon the simplest trust in the Divine character. Take only the resurrection from the dead. The apostle throws the whole question back on the Divine power by the analogy of the sowing and the reaping, which to man is impossible and inexplicable (1 Cor. xv. 36, 38). The grand lesson from this subject is the cheerful acceptance of our Divinely appointed lot. Cease to measure Him by ourselves. Simply trust.-J. Rawlinson. Isaiah condemns the sins of ancient Israel, and justifies the judgments of God. Observe I. WHAT SIN HAS DONE. 1. Mark its tendency to separate the soul from God. It estranged man from God at the very beginning. It does the same still, and if unforgiven will separate from Him to all eternity. 2. It has obscured and withdrawn from us the tokens of His favour. 3. It fearfully indisposes you to return you refuse His overtures, &c. II. WHAT GRACE CAN DO. 1. There is no deficiency in God's power to save. We are prone to limit the Holy One of Israel. Satan, who labours to diminish the evil of sin before its commission, equally loves to aggravate and enhance the difficulties of reconciliation. All obstacles to the sinner's restoration removed by Christ. 2. There is an infinite willingness in the heart of God to rescue and to save (ch. lv. 6-9), &c. God has shown His mercy to the chief of sinners. Heaven itself is a colony of saved souls. Christ describes Himself as more deeply wounded by the rejection of His mercy than He was by the agonies of the cross. III. THE VAST IMPORTANCE OF SEEKING MERCY-mercy to pardon sin, and grace to subdue it. 1. Seek Him in the full faith of His unbounded grace. 2. Labour to acquire a just sense and apprehension of the magnitude and aggravation of your rebellion. cannot be united to Christ unless you be divorced from sin. 3. Own and accept Christ in all His relations and offices. 4. Be diligent You and earnest in prayer. 5. Honour the work of the Spirit. 6. Keep Heaven and Eternity full in view.-Samuel Thodey. I. A lamentable state-separation from God. Loss of His favour. No access to Him. II. The cause of it. Much of all knowledge lies in the knowledge of causes. 1. Not in God-He is able and willing to save. 2. But in ourselves—our sins.-Archbishop Leighton: Works (1868 edition), pp. 428-432. Man's miseries-I. May not be charged upon God. He is able to save. Willing to save. II. Must be referred to man's wickedness. Actual in thought, word, deed; negligent; infatuated.-Dr. Lyth. - SIN SEPARATING FROM GOD. lix. 2. But your iniquities have separated, &c. Present separation supposes previous union and capacity for it. Man is capable of communion with God. God is capable of communion with man. There was a time when they were in full communion-when man was pure. When he fell he lost, not the capacity, but the privilege. How great a loss it was! Why are these two, so fitted to each other, one of them absolutely needing the other, separated? Sin has effected the separation. It produced it at first. It is the only hindrance in the way of friendly intercourse. This is the doctrine of our text. God's holy nature. If you have been at any time guilty of sin which you are unwilling to renounce, you have felt that intercourse between God and you was incongruous and presumptuous. Do we not all know this by experience? I. Sin unfits man for communion with God. Unrepented, unforsaken, unforgiven sin. II. Sin disinclines man for communion with God. It is "enmity against God." He who wrongs another will avoid his society if he thinks the wrong is known. The presence of the victim is a rebuke to his conscience and an excitement of his fears. The passage to dislike and hatred will probably not be slow. Is not this the course of the human heart in relation to God? Why do the great majority of men around us seem to live without any conscious thought of God, &c. He is avoided because there III. Sin excludes man from communion with God. It is possible not only for us to separate ourselves from God, but for Him to separate Himself from us. It is conceivable that a man, while unwilling to forsake his sin, might desire the advantage of intercourse with God in prayer and religious services. Many have imagined that by these they would compensate the Divine Being for sin. This notion seems to have been entertained in the time of Isaiah. The religious services and the flagrant iniquities of the Jewish people are described together. God declines to accept the services because of the iniquities (ch. lviii., lix.). No multitude of prayers or religious observances can be set against the holiness of heart and life which are required in those that come into any association with God. The spotless holiness of His nature forbids. Thus then the case stands. CONCLUSION. What, then, have God and man cut each other off from all possibility of happy intercourse, &c. ? We owe it to God's mercy that the breach can be repaired. A qualified Mediator has appeared, &c., has bridged over the distance sin had made between God and man. Repenting of your sins, casting yourselves at the footstool of mercy through the cross, friendship is restored. He becomes accessible. The call is addressed to every sinner. Spirit will be given to help. His This subject teaches the great evil. and danger of sin as the separater.— J. Rawlinson. Vers. 3, 4. A sad picture of depravity. I. In the hands and fingers. II. The lips and tongue. III. Desires and motives. IV. Heart and imagination. V. Life and conduct. Ver. 4. I. Actions proceed from thoughts. II. Correspond to the thoughts which produce them. III. Hence, when mischief is conceived iniquity is the produce.-J. Lyth, D.D. Vers. 5, 6. I. The devices of the wicked. Like eggs-productive. Like cockatrices' eggs-injurious. (a.) Like spiders' websfrail, useless. (8.) II. Their effect. Upon others-mischief, death. Upon themselves— disappointment, retribution.-Dr. Lyth. 80 See the spider's web, behold in it a most suggestive picture of the hypocrite's religion. 1. It is meant to catch his prey; the spider fattens himself on flies, and the Pharisee has his reward. Foolish persons are easily entrapped by the loud professions of pretenders, and even the more judicious cannot always escape. Philip baptized Simon Magus, whose guileful declaration of faith was 800n exploded by the stern rebuke of Peter. Custom, reputation, praise, advancement, and other flies, are the small game which hypocrites take in their nets. 2. A spider's web is a marvel of skill; look at it and admire the cunning hunter's wiles. Is not a deceiver's religion equally wonderful. How does he make so barefaced a lie appear to be a truth? How can he make his tinsel answer so well the purpose of gold? 3. A spider's web comes all from the creature's own bowels. The bee gathers her wax from flowers; the spider sucks no flowers, and yet she spins out her material to any length. Even so hypocrites find their hope and trust within them. selves; their anchor was forged on their own anvil, and their cable twisted by their own hauds. They lay their own foundation, and hew out the pillars of their own house, disdaining to be debtors to the sovereign grace of God. 4. But a spider's web is very frail. It is curiously wrought, but not enduringly manufactured. It is no match for the servant's broom, or the traveller's staff. The hypocrite needs no battery of Armstrongs to blow his hopes to pieces, a mere puff of wind will do it. Hypocritical cobwebs will soon come down when the broom of destruction begins its purifying work. 5. Which reminds us of one more thought, viz., that such cobwebs are not to be endured in the Lord's house. He will see to it that they and those who spin them shall be destroyed for ever. O my soul, be thou resting on something better than a spider's web. Be the Lord Jesus thine eternal hiding-place.-C. H. Spurgeon. WEBS BUT NOT GARMENTS. What a telling blow the prophet deals at the corruptions of his age! His illustration is homely, but, on that account, all the more forcible. The whole passage presents an appalling picture of the state of society,powers perverted, &c. The two things. always go together-the practice of wickedness, and recourse to vain excuses to palliate it. An evil course cannot long be pursued without some plea which justifies it to the sinner's mind. These fictions are the very food on which his sin lives. Tear them away, and you strip him of those defences behind which he fortifies himself in the practice of iniquity. This is what God's prophet is trying to do; not only denouncing sin, but exposing the worthlessness of the pleas by which it is encouraged. These fancies he characterises as "spiders' webs" (ver. 5); and, continuing the metaphor (ver. 6), he declares-"Their webs shall not become garments." It is a kindness to undeceive one who labours under a fatal mistake, however unpleasant the task. Some of you are the victims of soul-destroying delusions; but soon you will pass into a world of reality, where every dark subterfuge in which you try to hide yourselves, will be illumined in all its corners by the fierce and searching light of eternity. You are weaving your subtle webs of fancy and practice now, bestowing pains upon them, thinking well of them, and gaining the approval of others; but they are mere shoddy, which, though it pass from the loom, is worthless for wear. Let us visit some of the looms in the great factory of human life, and see what sort of fabrics the weavers are turning out. 1. There is one who is weaving the web of a respectable life. Living for appearances, squaring his opinions and behaviour by the maxims of the world; pleasant and accommodating whatever company he may enter, and putting up even with Christian society, if they are not too decided. No strong principles has he to bring him into collision with other people. His principle is to have no principles, but to fall in with those of others. If ever he offered a real prayer it would be-"O God, keep me on good terms with the world; save me from anything that would incur its censure, or draw down upon me its frown." He worships the goddess of respectability. It would never do for him to be any thing but sober, honest, and industrious. He cannot throw into his web the dark threads which they use who have sunk so low as to have no regard even for public opinion. It has attractive colours and a glossy surface. Such goods are in demand in the world's market; but with no higher purpose, his web shall not be come a garment. He has lived without the thought of God, and tried to do as others do, not what conscience and Scripture command. II. At another loom sits a busy worker weaving the web of formalism. The formalist sees something good in religion, but is mistaken as to the way in which its blessedness is secured. His trust is in the outward observance of religious ceremonies, forgetting that the Kingdom of God is a thing of the heart. Precise and regular in his church attendance and Sabbath observance, he is yet cold and heartless. No warm, loving impulse stirs his soul. He has made a god of religious routine (Job viii. 13, 14). It is hard to undeceive such a man, just because of his familiarity with sacred things (Matt. xxi. 31). He who weaves such a web, is only preparing a windingsheet for his dead soul. III. There is another weaving the web of self-righteousness. Not blindly trusting in ceremonies, but relying on an upright life. Without a change of heart he tries to obey the law (Rom. x. 3), but his view of sin is defective. So long as the Divine law is regarded as an outward rule, you may think you render a tolerably perfect obedience, but let its light shine into the heart and it reveals the sinner's guilt (Rom. vii. 7-9). Self-righteousness may be a web, but it never shall become a garment (ch. lvii. 12; lxiv. 6). We are to work not for but from acceptance and pardon. Never can we fulfil the law until the heart has been changed by the experience of God's mercy (Phil. iii. 9). IV. Further on we encounter another who is weaving the web of reliance on the future. A young man who promises himself long life and abundant oppor tunity. He is bent on trying some experiments in weaving before he settles down to serious work. He means to attend to religious matters, but not just now. Can he count upon the uncertain future? can he promise himself inclination and opportunity? That is the web which the young are prone to weave. How is it with those more advanced in life? V. Here is an old man busily weaving the web of amendment, thinking thus to atone for the vices and follies of an ill-spent youth. But can any resolution for the future wipe out the guilt of the erring past? If he wishes to begin life anew he must go to the cross, and make that his startingpoint, but he blindly imagines that reformation of life will supply the garment which he needs. VI. Have I exhausted the various classes of weavers? Alas for our race if I have! Many find the requisite garment provided for them in the righteousness of Christ (Rom. iii. 2126; iv. 5). It fits us, becomes us, protects us, will never grow old, and will never be out of fashion. How can you appear before God in the flimsy dress of your own manufacture? (Matt. xxii. 11-13). But do we cease to be weavers when we "put on the Lord Jesus Christ?" The weaving of the right sort can only then begin; for, the righteousness wrought out for us and imputed becomes a righteous ness wrought in us and imparted. Christ takes the web of our life into his own hands (1 Cor. i. 30; Gal. ii. 20). Instead of leading to licentiousness a free justification alone can sanctify the life (Rom. vi. 1–4). To which class of weavers do you belong? Look at your life-how profitless, purposeless, and polluted! Can that web clothe you for standing before God, when it is finished and removed from the beam? Throw it away, tear it to shreds, abandon alike your good and bad works, and listen to the Redeemer's voice (Rev. iii. 18). You pity the poorly-clad amid the biting frosts and snows of winter, but more to be pitied are they who advance into the winter of declining years, the chill region of death, and the storms of judgment, with no sufficient clothing for their defenceless souls!-William Guthrie, M.A. Ver. 7. Depravity. I. Has its seat in the heart. II. Its expression in the conduct. III. Its issue in misery and ruin.-J. Lyth, D.D. Ver. 8. I. The characters described. Those who make crooked paths-1. From the line of duty prescribed by the law. 2. By the Gospel. 3. By conscience. II. Their awful condition. Cannot know peace. In life-death-eternal world.-C. Simeon, M.A. The path of transgressors is one—I. Of contention. II. Of injustice. III. Of perverseness. IV. Of misery. Vers. 9-15. I. The misery of sinners. No light, comfort, certainty, security, relief, salvation. II. The cause. Transgression multiplied, acknowledged, aggravated, open, wilful, exciting justly the displeasure of God.—Dr. Lyth. HELP FOR SEEKERS OF THE LIGHT. lix. 9. We wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness. I. I address myself, through the words of the text, to persons who are desirous of obtaining the true and heavenly light, who have waited hoping to receive it, but instead of obtaining it are in a sadder state than they were, and they are almost driven into the dark foreboding that for them no light will ever come; they shall be prisoners chained for ever in the valley of the shadow of death. 1. These persons are in some degree aware of their natural darkness. They are looking for light. They are not content with their obscurity, they are waiting for brightness. They discover in their nature much of evil, they would fain be rid of it; they find in their understanding much ignorance, and they would fain be illuminated. They pant to escape from this ignorance, they desire to know the truth which saves the soul; and their desire is not only to know it in theory, but to know it by its practical power upon the inner man. 2. They have a high idea of |